T.H. Marshall's "Citizenship and Social Class"

An old conservative-minded contention goes something like this: if you start with an egalitarian ethos, you will bottom out at complete leveling. It's a slippery slope to the end of individuality. This was not simply a social or economic claim. Once upon a time, especially in Europe, this attitude stymied equality before the law, a liberal norm most of us would now take for granted. Once upon another time, it was used also to forestall universal suffrage, now a democratic norm in any decent political order.

Foes—at least many early ones—of equality before the law or universal suffrage supposed that a society ought to be governed by natural aristocracy. This later became meritocracy for many of them. Surely, this marked considerable improvement, yet meritocracy was often conceived narrowly, with little consideration of how unearned social advantages or disadvantages shape the life chances of most people.